Harry's Hope
by MyBadIdeas
Summary: Harry only has one thing left to look forward to. No pairing dark ficlet. Rated for foul language.


Disclaimer: JKR owns them.

A/N: This has not been beta'd, so feel free to point out my punctuation errors.

Harry's Hope

"Fuck" He trembled in the darkened room; fire gone out; dampness soaking into his bones. "Fuck" His mind was lost in a whirl of images, no organized thoughts, just picture after picture of the life draining from his friend, his light, his never-ending source of laughter. The cold crept in around the drafty, ancient window frames, wrapping itself around his overly thin body, caressing his flesh.

"FUCK!" he yelled as if screaming would tear the images from his brain so he could think again, so he could tell himself that it was long ago, that it hadn't just happened for the thousandth time that night. The thick quilt lay at the foot of his bed, untouched; he needed to feel it, he wanted to be painfully cold.

It took an hour. Sixty minutes of trembling and cursing and freezing, before he could think an entire sentence without feeling he would vomit. The pain started in his chest and spread throughout him like a cancer. His fingers curled so tightly into his hands that the skin was perilously close to breaking; his throat was dry and raw from the repeated sobbing expletive; his back ached from the constant tiny rocking motion he was not aware of.

"Fuck," this time a whisper as his head fell to his hands. He didn't feel worthy of the delicate touch of soft sheets below him. Uncle Vernon was right. He was nothing; so worthless he couldn't even save his very first friend, the one who blindly followed him into danger, the one who trusted in his ability to always bring him back out safely. Uncle Vernon would say "I told you so, you're nothing but a freak, a hoodlum, a depraved piece of filth."

Tears rolled in hot streaks down his chilled cheeks, feeling like trails of fire. The humiliation of his inadequacy, the shame of his failures, pulled him down into the mattress and knocked him to the floor - the cold stone floor. He curled into a ball, and tried to make himself small - infinitesimally so. Perhaps he could disappear and Ron would be able to take his place in the world of the living; he could trade his worthless life for one that so many mourned. After all, he was the one who was supposed to die, he was the one who needed to sacrifice himself for the betterment of the Wizarding world. But instead, he was the one left behind, alone, frightened by the thought that it would never end.

He would always be a small weak boy, wrapped in darkness, surrounded by walls that were far to close. He would always be just a child locked in a cupboard listening to the snarling diatribe of a loathsome man; wondering if what he said was true or if, somehow, he was the one who was normal and his Uncle was the disgusting spawn of freaks.

For one all too brief yet brilliantly shining moment, Harry had hopes, dreams, a desire to see the future unfold. He wasn't alone and cold, he thought there was something to live for. There had been warm hands to pull him from the suffocating confinement, to show him what love and friendship meant, not just that - he had felt a part of a family. Now it was all gone; he couldn't face the eyes that filled with tears when he came into a room. He was a terrible reminder to them all, a reminder of what they had lost.

He'd rather have been left to de-construct slowly in the confines of the Dursley home than to have been shown the possibilities. How had he let himself believe that he could have what others took for granted?

The pain was growing as his hipbone dug into the hard surface of the floor, he loved it, it was the only thing left to love, well, the pain and the cold. Two things to grab a hold of, two things to let him know that he was really still alive and not forever trapped in the depths of a hellish void for all of eternity. If he was still alive that meant that one day he would die, and he still held desperately to the hope that death would be better than this. His puffy eyes fluttered shut and a sad smile spread across his face as he thought of eventual escape.


End file.
